Monday, March 27, 2006

Judgments to be delivered in Telugu

Chief Justice G. S. Singhvi likely to issue an order in this regard following his assurance to language panel chief A.B.K. Prasad

HYDERABAD: Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh G. S. Singhvi is likely to issue an order to all the subordinate courts in the State shortly to deliver judgments in Telugu.

At present, no single subordinate court (district sessions court and below) is issuing the judgment in Telugu.

Justice Singhvi gave an assurance to ask these courts to use local language — be it Telugu, Kannada or Urdu depending on the areas in the State — when Official Languages Commission Chairman A. B. K. Prasad met him on Saturday.

Mr. Prasad said a Government Order (485) on this was issued way back in 1974.

While approaching the Chief Justice to come to the rescue of Telugu, the Chairman went by his known stand that "real justice will accrue to the public only if the judgments are given in mother tongue."

The Chief Justice was stated to have told Mr. Prasad that the subordinate courts in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana were already delivering judgments in the people's language there, Hindi, and that he was all for using Telugu in this category of courts in Andhra Pradesh.

He, however, said the GO was not binding on the Supreme and High Courts, which were supposed to issue judgments only in English.

Meanwhile, efforts were on by the Commission to introduce new Telugu software developed by National Informatics Centre to make implementation of Telugu in Government offices across the State more effective.